CrossFire Supported by Animation Science

Electronic Arts bought into Sony's middleware program early this week in the announcement that it's partnering with Animation Science Corp in the devlopment of CrossFire (formerly known as X-Fire).

Animation Science Corp. specializes in realtime interactive 3D animation, effects and behavior simulation technologies, and plans to build these features into the other "first-person" shooter (the first being From Software's Eternal Ring) on PlayStation2.

Animation Science is licensing its particle physics technologies to EA-Square (the Japanese publishing sister of Square-EA in the West) for its new game title, Crossfire. Also known as X-Fire, the game's designers plan on making use of PlayStation2's massive floating point processing power for numerous purposes, leveraging Animation Science's character behaviors, complex physical simulations, and realtime special effects.

"Animation Science is proud to deliver its rules-based technology to noted leaders in the worldwide market for game software and devices,'' said Eyal Cohen, President of Animation Science. "This new title will take the interactive game genre to a new level of fantasy. Sony has raised the bar with a more powerful game device architecture. EA Square's advanced game engine will take full advantage of the new PlayStation capabilities to enhance the gaming experience. Animation Science provides the critical middleware link, with TV/film broadcast quality ambience created by its physics particle technology.''

"Animation Science brings proven, advanced rules-based animation to the enormous market for real-time interactive games,'' said Ray Nakazato, Vice President of Product Development for EA Square. "Their deep knowledge of special effects and simulation and experience in integrating and deploying these technologies makes Animation Science ideally suited to team with us in this large-scale, fast turnaround development project.''